Legacy telephone entry systems for multi-unit buildings were designed decades ago to enable building tenants to communicate with visitors and remotely unlock a building door. These archaic systems provide a telephone connection between visitors at building doors outside and tenants inside their units. However, the systems are not equipped to verify a visitor's identity, which can compromise the security of the building. Also, the systems require a tenant to remotely unlock the door at the moment requested by the visitor, which keeps legitimate visitors from being able to enter the building with the tenant is unavailable or unreachable. Furthermore, the systems do not provide a record of visitors that entered the building.
A number of recent trends have exposed the limitations of legacy telephone entry systems and created a significant pain point for building tenants. First, there is an ongoing shift from brick-and-mortar retail shopping to online retail shopping that has resulted in an explosion of package deliveries. As building tenants increasingly rely on online shopping for basic goods, they expect their packages to be delivered into their buildings on time and securely. Package delivery services also want to deliver packages on the first attempt, which prevents having to process a package multiple times, and as quickly as possible. Second, there is an emergence of applications running on mobile computing devices, such as smart phones or tablets, that offer on-demand delivery services and home services (e.g., Instacart, Amazon Fresh, Google Express, Blue Apron), prepared food delivery (e.g., DoorDash, GrubHub, SpoonRocket, Yelp/Eat24, Seamless, Sprig, Caviar), laundry pick-up and drop-off (e.g., Washio, Rinse), home cleaning (e.g., Handy, Exec), alcohol delivery (e.g., Minibar, Saucey), general services (e.g., Amazon Home Services, Taskrabbit), and many others, all of which require efficient building access to reach their customers. Third, the proliferation of mobile computing devices has enabled individuals to be productive from almost anywhere thanks to constant access to voice and data networks. Individuals now expect to be able to control their lives from their mobile computing devices.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for improved systems and methods for entering the door to a building on behalf of a tenant of the building.